Rudolf Steiner tackles the age-old question of freedom in a new and unique way. He shows that, by considering our own activity of thinking, we can realize the reasons for why we act. And if these reasons are taken from the realm of our ideals, our actions are free, because only we determine them.

In the first decade of the 20th century, August Ewerbeck got word that there were intimate circles in which Rudolf Steiner gave special esoteric training to those admitted to them. So he asked his teacher whether he too might be allowed to attend, and received the astonishing reply: “You don’t need to! You have understood my Philosophy of Freedom!”

Asked which of his books he would most want to see rescued if catastrophe should come upon the world, Rudolf Steiner replied without hesitation: "The Philosophy of Freedom".

In a conversation with Rudolf Steiner in 1922 Walter Johannes Stein asked, “What will remain of your work in thousands of years? Rudolf Steiner replied: “Nothing but the Philosophy of Freedom,” and then he added: “But everything is contained in it. If someone realizes the act of freedom described there, he finds the whole content of Anthroposophy”.